As most of you know, my daughter Jaime has an 8 month old English Bulldog. He has cherry eye at the moment, and the vet has advised that he needs surgery to correct the problem. The vet also wants to do a procedure to open up his nasel passages at the same time. Does this sound right to you, or is the vet trying to make money???

Cherry eye of course needs surgery. The airway is up for question. Does the bulldog have a hard time breathing? Is he a heavy breather while at rest? Does he pant a lot?

I have pugs and an English Bulldog and everytime I take a pug to the vet I get the speech on surgery to open up the airway. My pugs don't suffer from breathing problems at all. In fact, I rarely see them pant. If they had trouble breathing then I would consider the procedure, but most of the time I think vets want to make money and don't understand much about the brachcephalic breeds...

I found this article helpful in researching breathing problems with short-nosed animals:http://www.pugcentral.com/brachsyndrome.html
It lists some signs to look for if your dog has stenotic nostrils or other breathing problems.

But when in doubt, it is always best to get a 2nd opinion from another vet, particularly one that is experienced in handling bulldogs. If your vet hasn't handled many bulldogs, their tendency to get short-winded easily may look more serious than what it really is.